


Tea for Two

by duc



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Tatooine Slave Culture, Tzai, and bits of Naboo worldbuilding, would you look at that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 09:54:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10828878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duc/pseuds/duc
Summary: Where it turns out culturally linked concepts can look a lot like logical conclusions at a glance.Related: for a politician and a peacekeeper, Padmé and Anakin are shockingly bad at deescalating





	Tea for Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fialleril](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril/gifts).



Naboo, 10 days before Anakin is due to rendezvous with Obi-Wan and the newly formed GAR

 

Padmé took one long sip of Tzai.

“I’m going to miss it,” She said, laying her head back on Anakin’s shoulder.

“Mmmmh?” She felt more than she heard Anakin’s questioning hum.

“Tzai,” She said. “When we go back to our real lives and I’m on Coruscant and you’re wherever the war takes you for months on end. I’m going to miss being able to have Tzai.”

Anakin twisted his neck to look down at her. “Well I’m glad you enjoy it,” He said “I’m glad I can share it with you,” He smiled, shy and bright at the same time and Padmé couldn’t help but smile in response.

She took his hand and squeezed it. _She was glad he had someone to share it with, in her._

“And…” Anakin started again, “Maybe one day - at some point in the future, I mean -you’ll have the recipe so you’ll be able to make it yourself.”

Padmé sat up so she could look at him properly.

“You mean you would teach me?” She said. She distinctly remembered him telling her the secret of Tzai was only to be shared with family.

Anakin nodded and then ducked his head, suddenly bashful.

Warmth bloomed in Padmé’s chest as the full meaning of what he said sunk in and she tried not to smile like an idiot. Tzai wasn’t important to her the way it was to Anakin, how could it be? It wasn’t her culture. But she had an idea of how important it was to his people. It was a family ritual and she felt touched he considered her close enough to him for that.

 _And Anakin has just lost half of his existing family._ Padmé thought.

With Shmi gone, the only person he had left was his brother Kitster, who – they had learned from the Moss Espa gossip – had bought his freedom recently and was traveling all over Tatooine. It was good for Kitster but it meant they hadn’t been able to contact him. There was the Lars and Beru Whistesun, but Padmé got the feeling they were more like distant extended relatives than immediate family. And in any case, Anakin had only met them once in less than ideal circumstances.

Padmé tried to imagine her family, as rarely as she got to see them these days, all dead except for Sola and a bunch of her mother’s cousins. She tried to imagine no one knowing how to make her father’s holiday bread –even if it wasn’t the same - anymore and her heart sank.

“Maybe you can show me now,” She said, thinking that this could be something she could do to help. To make him feel connected to someone in the galaxy.

Anakin… blinked. “What, right now?” It didn’t come out as a squawk, but it was close. She has surprised him.

“Well it’s late, right now,” she answered, “But we could do it tomorrow. Unless you don’t want to…?”

“No, no!” He cut her off, shaking his head vehemently. “Tomorrow’s good. We’ll do it tomorrow.” He was looking at her like she had given him the galaxy. He extended a hand and she took it, cuddling against him and congratulating herself on having cheered him up.

 

***

 

Naboo, 7 days before Anakin is due to rendezvous with Obi-Wan and the GAR

 

Padmé had never thought of herself as the reminiscing type, she had always had her mind on the current crisis and her eyes toward the next bill, the next hearing, the next opportunity.

Bu now she was stuck in protective custody/convalescent leave, with a boy/man she hadn’t seen in 10 years, who she knew and didn’t at the same time, and it felt like all they did was talk about the past.

And it was nice. She enjoyed listening to Anakin’s stories, of course. Be they bits of Tatooine folktales or sagas detailing his and Obi-Wan’s misadventures since Naboo. For one thing he had a pretty good sense of timing, humor and pacing, for another she liked the chance to catch up with all she had missed.

But talking about herself, that was also nice. Padmé rarely had the chance to reflect on much of anything that wasn’t directly related to the agenda of the day. Now she found herself wandering through from subject to another, with no rhyme nor reason, almost like when the handmaidens used to push all their beds together at night and talk until they fell asleep.

“…And that’s when Sola started the joke that I was going to be married to politics forever and never find a spouse.”

Anakin chuckled and took his eyes off his slice of cake. Padmé stealthily speared a piece.

“You laugh,” she said, after eating her stolen bite. “But it’s been _12 years_ and she _still_ teases me about it every time she sees me.”

“And now you _are_ married but you can’t tell her about it.” Anakin chuckled harder.

Padmé froze mid-way through stabbing another piece.

“I’m what?” She had almost heard “married” but that didn’t make sense.

“Married,” Anakin repeated blithely.

 

20 minutes and some backtracking later…

 

“…DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!”

“I thought you _knew_!”

 

***

 

Naboo, 6 days before Anakin is due to rendezvous with Obi-Wan and the GAR

 

“I can’t believe I got married without knowing,” Padmé grumbled, not ready to let it go quite yet. “I can’t believe I got married _in my pyjamas_.”

Anakin’s shoulders hunched. “…We don’t _have_ to be,” he said after a few seconds of silence. “If it’s making you unhappy.”

“No,” She replied immediately. “I want to.”

And it was, she was surprised to find, true. She wanted them to stay married. And her motivations had little to do with sparing Anakin’s feelings, they were about the thrill she got in her stomach every time she thought the words _my husband_. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure it was the wisest decision or the best time for it.”

“I _thought_ it was sudden,” she heard Anakin mutter.

“But now that we apparently are, I want it.”

How did one even get divorced in Anakin’s community, in any case? It wasn’t as if she could unlearn the recipe. She pocked half-heartedly at the datapad in her hand. When she looked her up Anakin was still watching her patiently, but expectantly.

“but?” he prompted.

“I just feel like I missed it.”

Anakin cocked his head “The wedding?” he asked.

“Yes.” Now that she had had time to digest the misunderstanding - as much her fault as his, if she was honest with herself. That was emerging as the real sore point. “You say we’re married - and I believe you,” she held up a hand. “But as much as did understand you showing me Tzai was important, it’s not how I think of weddings. So now I feel as if I missed it, as if the ceremony happened without me and I was told about it afterward. We didn’t even say the words.” Padmé said.

“The words?”

“The marriage oath. On Naboo _that’s_ when you become married, when you say the oath in front of a cleric and 2 witnesses. And then the cleric blesses the union.”

“Oh,” Anakin said. “I see.”

Padmé doubted he did, not really. The same way she was sure she still did not get what Tzai meant to him. But He must have gotten the general idea, because next he said.

“Can you get married in secret on Naboo?”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“The ceremony you talked about. Is there a way to do it while keeping our relationship a secret? Is that possible?”

 _No_ , was Padmé’s first thought. Beside the facts weddings were very public celebrations, all clerics wrote a marriage certificate immediately after the blessing, said certificate was promptly filed with the Civic department who would update the concerned citizens’ records. No one got married “quietly and without anyone knowing”, not outside of dramatic star-crossed lover folktales, and she doubted the real life clerics of Naboo’s various religious orders would be inclined to A/ perform a marriage ceremony out of the blue, in a secluded, deserted place, and B/ misfile the paperwork afterward.

She was reasonably _sure_ of that… Then again…

“You do realise,” she had to ask. “That this can potentially get us in even deeper trouble than we already are?”

Anakin shrugged.

“We’re already in trouble, and like you said, I got my ceremony, it’s only fair you get yours.”

 

***

 

Naboo, 5 days before Anakin is due to rendez-vous with Obi-Wan and the newly formed GAR.

 

“You don’t have anything white to wear, do you?”

Padmé knew Anakin owned a grand total of 2 full changes of clothes, so her chances were slim, but it was better to ask.

The wide look he gave her over his stack of datapads was answer enough.

“Why? Is it important?” he asked, in a tone that told Padmé he was getting ready to remedy the situation if she said yes.

“Yes and no,” She sighed. “Couples marry in white.”

“Oh, for new beginnings.”

 _So that's where my datapad on court attire had gone_. “Yes. But it doesn’t matter anyway,” she said before he could start plotting a trip to Theed to buy some. “You don’t wear just any white clothes. You wear _bridal robes_. They’re very distinct from just about any other types of clothing and there is no way to buy them without generating more gossip than we can afford.”

“Oh,”

“Uniforms are a time honored substitute in a pinch, anyway,” she said.

“What about you? If bridal robes are a very specific kind of clothing, do you have any?” He gestured in the general direction of her closet. Anakin was perpetually astounded by Padmé’s closet. She couldn’t quite tell if it was astonishment at the sheer variety and volume or dismay at the extravagance.

“No,” Padmé sighed. “They’re not something you keep around just in case. I never even thought I would get married, much less looked at bridal robes, although I remember thinking my grandmother’s bridal dress was the most beautiful one in all of Naboo. My family has it in storage, as an heirloom,” she explained. “It’s got these clever beaded motifs all over that weave three different traditional blessings together and I’ve always admired it.”

“If it’s in storage, is you family going to notice if it goes missing?”

Padmé blinked.

Anakin was on to something.

 

***

 

Naboo, 3 days before Anakin is due to rendezvous with Obi-Wan and the newly formed GAR.

 

“The Pontifex is at the gate” Anakin said in the predawn light. “Are you ready?”

Padmé gave her veil one last tug. She had bridal robes, borrowed-without-permission as they were; they had two witnesses in Artoo and Threepio, a part of Padmé would miss having Sola or Sabé act as her witness, but she could not in good conscience drag anyone else in this nonsense, and she was genuinely glad the two droids were there; they had a Cleric in the person of the bemused Pontifex Agolerga; she had Anakin technically her husband already, who she couldn’t wait to marry again so that she would be able to stop hesitating before thinking of him as her husband.

This was utter madness, but she was doing it anyway.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> This came about due to a conversation with Fialleril about the Amavikka marriage ceremony and how it was done in such a lowkey way that an outsider could come away from it thinking they had been invited to an impromptu potluck. And then Fialleril said they could see it happening to Padmé in some AUs. 
> 
> And then started thinking about canon, and how it made very little sense even for people as impulsive as Anakin and Padmé to get married within weeks (if we're generous with the timeline) of remeeting, when the simple fact of them marrying was a bad idea to begin with, and this popped out.


End file.
